European programmes of lifelong learning and professional training At the level of the European Union and of the European Commission, a wide

range of decisions are made regarding education, its quality, educational systems and processes. There are several areas of intervention, including the one aimed at Vocational Education and Training, which aims to expand the range of professional training and personal growth opportunities in the context of lifelong learning. To this end, the European Commission sets as its priorities the multiplication of communication, cooperation and collaboration relations between the Member States with regard to educational policies and the identification of possible sources and resources for financing educational projects.

The education and training programmes, managed by the European Commission and implemented at the level of each community belonging to the Member States are:

• The Lifelong Learning Programme, whichaims to capitalize on lifelong learning opportunities (LLPs), based on an agreement signed by the Member States.

• The Erasmus Mundus Programme, which aims to improve the quality of higher education and promote the intercultural dialogue through cooperation of the Member States with third countries, according to Decision no. 1298/2008/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council, as of 16 December 2008;

• The Tempus Programme, which aims to and supports the modernization of higher education in the neighbouring areas of the EU. It promotes institutional cooperation at the level of the Member States and in partner countries, concentrating its actions on the area of higher education in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Western Balkans and the Mediterranean region;

• The bilateral cooperation programme, which aims at a set of actions designed to enhance cooperation between the Member States and the industrialized countries targeted primarily in North America and Asia-Pacific. This programme equally aims to provide financial support for student mobility. Cooperation with industrialised countries proposes various partnerships in higher education, including the EU-USA ATLANTIS Programme, the EU-CANADA Transatlantic Exchange Partnerships (TEP), the EU-ICI ECP understanding and cooperation programme, involving countries such as Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the Republic of Korea.

• Intra-ACP Academic Mobility Scheme - promoting higher education cooperation in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP), and managing partnership funds between higher education institutions (HEIs) from different countries in these regions, providing scholarships for students and academics to carry out research or teaching mobilities in another country included in the programme.

Returning to the Lifelong Learning Programme (LLP), it is composed of the following categories of (sub-) programmes:

a) Sectoral programmes: Comenius; Erasmus; Leonardo da Vinci; Grundtvig.

These programmes are carried out by the punctual identification of some transversal activities: Cooperation and innovation policy; Linguistic diversity;

Information and communication technology; Dissemination and capitalisation of results.

The structure of the Lifelong Learning Programme is therefore made up of:

• four sectoral programmes addressing pre-university education (Comenius), higher education (Erasmus), vocational training (Leonardo da Vinci) and adult education (Grundtvig);

• a cross-cutting programme, focusing on cross-cutting areas (policy cooperation and innovation on lifelong learning, languages, use of information and communication technology innovations, dissemination and exploitation of results);

• a programme to support teaching, research and reflection on European integration and the main European institutions and bodies (Jean Monnet Programme).

The structure of the LLP programme therefore consists of the following sectoral sub-programmes:

- Comenius Programme (schools)

- Erasmus Programme (university education)

- Leonardo da Vinci Programme (vocational training) - Grundtvig Programme (adult education)

- A cross-cutting program with four key activities;

a. Key activity no. 1: Strategic cooperation and innovation in lifelong learning;

b. Key activity no. 2: Foreign languages;

c. Key activity no. 3: Development of ICT-based content;

d. Key activity no. 4: Dissemination and exploitation of results.

- Jean Monet Programme (Jean Monet Action, funding grants for designated institutions, funding grants for other European institutions).

Based on the Candidate's Guide, we also identify a series of objectives common to all (showingminor changesfor the years 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013):

ANNALS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CRAIOVA, Psychology - Pedagogy, year XIX, no 41

Overall objective: to encourage exchanges, cooperation and mobility between education institutions and systems in the European Union so that they become benchmarks worldwide.

Specific objectives:

 To contribute to the development of quality lifelong learning, to promote high performance, innovation and a European dimension in the systems and practices in the field;

 To support the achievement of an economic areaof lifelong learning;

 To help improve the quality, attractiveness and accessibility of lifelong learning opportunities in the Member States;

 To emphasise the contribution of lifelong learning to social cohesion, active civic spirit, intercultural dialogue, gender equality and personal development;

 To promote creativity, competitiveness, employment opportunities and the development of entrepreneurship;

 To contribute to the increased participation in lifelong learning of people of all ages, including those with special needs and disadvantaged groups, regardless of their socio-economic background;

 To promote language learning and linguistic diversity;

 To support the development of ICT-based content, services, pedagogical methods and innovative practices of lifelong learning;

 To strengthen the role of lifelong learning in creating a sense of European citizenship based on understanding and respect for human rights and democracy, encouraging tolerance and respect for peoples and cultures;

 To promote cooperation in the field of quality assurance in all sectors of education;

 To encourage the optimal use of innovative results, products and processes, as well as the exchange of good practices in the field relevant to the Lifelong Learning Programme, in order to improve the quality of education and training.

Since 1980, the Eurydice network has been an extraordinary provider of information on education in Europe. The network's mission is to cater reliable information and comprehensive analysis of European education systems and policies. It consists of 40 national units, located in 36 countries participating in the EU Lifelong Learning Programme: Member States; Croatia, Macedonia, Iceland, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey; Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. The Eurydice Network is coordinated and managed by the EU-based Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA), based in Brussels.

Eurypedia is a multilingual online encyclopedia that aims to present as accurately as possible the image of education systems across Europe. Managed by the Eurydice network and regularly updated by education experts and national ministries across Europe, it provides access to over 5,000 articles on the organisation of education systems and the latest reforms. If you want to understand a particular education system or if you want to analyse an issue of education at the European

level, Eurypedia provides you with the most detailed information about 38 school and university systems.

b) The Jean Monet Programme aims to enhance learning, teaching, research and reflection within and outside the European Commission.

The studies focus on the origins and evolution of the European Community and the European Union, the role of the EU in the dialogue between peoples and cultures, the role of the EU and its perception in the world.

11. Conclusions

The permanent character of education highlights the fact that education is undertaken throughout life. In the past, education referred only to one stage of human life (childhood and youth), which was possible given the slow pace of the development of society.

Even in these conditions, the great thinkers insisted on the idea that education is necessary to be be pursued throughout the entire life. Seneca, for example, advocated that the elderly should also learn, Comenius claimed that for every man his life is a school, from the cradle to the grave, and Nicolae Iorga stated that a learned man is one who learns constantly and who constantly teaches others.

However, lifelong learning becomes a vital necessity of the contemporary society, it is a theoretical and action principle aiming to put order in a reality specific to our century. It is a permanent process in time (taking place throughout life) and extensively in space (it includes both school education and education that takes place outside of school).

The fundamental purpose of lifelong learning is to maintain and improve the quality of life. It represents the democratisation of education, being at the same time an organisational principle for all types of education, thus fulfilling multiple functions: adaptation, correction and innovation.

The permanent character of education lends a new perspective to education as an activity aimed at the development of the human personality. The permanence of education makes education no longer conceived as mere preparation for life, but becomes a dimension of life, an existential continuum, whose duration overlaps with the duration of life itself. This abolishes the division of life into two stages: one for the acquisition of knowledge and another for its use. Education is no longer limited to what is achieved in school, but it continues after graduation (post-graduate education, various forms of training and development, including self-education).

At a theoretical level, lifelong learning is, on the one hand, a fundamental pedagogical concept, an integrative one, which encompasses all aspects of the educational act, and on the other hand, an operational pedagogical concept, which extends its applications to all aspects of education.

As an open pedagogical model, lifelong learning fosters curriculum design in school, achievable at all levels, and the subjects of study in relation to all training and development resources of the student, capitalisable throughout life, in a moral, intellectual, technological, aesthetic, psychophysical way; formally, non-formally, informally.

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ALLOSTATIC NEUROPLASTICITY AND EPIGENETIC